Stop Yapping, Start Building: Real African Contributions to Web3 - Chukwuemeka Uche

JM J. All right, cool. So, as I'm waiting for my slide, yeah, my talk is very controversial, you know, and many people will be against it, but it's not my business. I've spoken I've said about this multiple times, even on X and everywhere. So, let's do it here in Lagos.

Again, before I ask that, how many of us are developers? Let me see your hands up. If you're a developer, let me see your hand. I know. I know.

Okay. So, nobody here is a developer. All right. Let me come to non-developers. How many of us here are technical writers or content writers?

All right. Cool. How many of us are content creators? All right. Cool.

So

I don't know why my slide is okay. All right. So there's the topic. Stop yapping start building real African contributions to web theory. All right.

So first of all because the reason why I brought up this topic the reason I brought up this topic is because many of us the latest or latest trend around web 3 now is all about yapping. Our name How many of us used to yap here? It's only one person. You used to Why do you stop yapping?

All right, cool. So, all right. So, let me introduce myself. They introduced me as Chrome. That's my native name.

But I'm Dei Boy and I'm an ecosystem lead also a developer relations guy and currently I'm an ecosystem lead for Next Bridge. All right. So when to say Africa is the future, right? Africa is the future of web. Are we correct or am I correct?

I need response. Are we am I correct? All right. Cool. But how many of us are actually trying to build the future of the African in Africa because we all do talks or we want to see action.

So that's why I want to ask we say Africa is the future of web theory but how many persons or who is building the future of that web here in Africa is anyone building let me know building the future of web theory in Africa is is the question confusing how many of us are building the future of web in Africa it does not mean you are building a product all right So currently here in Africa we have multiple like young tech people cuz young people are literally the ones occupying the tech populations here in Africa. Then we also have untapped techkilled potentials. I don't mention developers. So we have multiple untapped techkilled potential tech skilled people. Then we also have real world problems that web three can solve.

Now out of everything we have here, we have multiple issues. Let me call them issues that web 3 could solve and can solve. But we face one of the biggest things these days in the web 3 space especially Africa. Let me say CNG because yeah I'm in Nigeria and what is that? I've talked about this multiple times even on X and other places.

We tend to focus on hype than actual contribution. Am I think everybody's accepting because when I spoke about this in they almost beat me. All right. So many of us do more hype. We do more like not what we supposed to do in the space.

So now if we are truly here to say we are building the future of web in Africa but in the reality when we come is just hype we do more than the actual contribution. Can we really or can we actually stand on our feet and say we are really building the future of web in Africa. We can't do that actually. Now what I'm trying to see is that we want to I want to see a place not just me we should see a place where if we talk we should actually be building the future of web in Africa and when I mention building many of you here will just look at me at like I'm not a builder I don't know how to write code I don't know how to do this because many of us now when you hear the word builders there are people who build products right but that's true and in another term it's also not true because builders ers are not just developers. Builders are people who use their skills to contribute to something.

So you are a let me say you're a designer, you are a writer, you are a content creator, you're actually contributing um when you're using your skill to contribute, you're actually building. That's why they say build yourself. When you say build yourself, you're contributing with your skills. And those are the things that we want to actually see here in Africa rather than what we currently see here now. And why did I now say stop yapping and start building when you come into this space newly?

What do you see people yapping? Well currently yapping is not really bad as how they see it. But when I say stop yapping many of us or how many of us has done it when we come on Twitter we post our photo and say gee let me use one of the sponsors now let me say okay le start a kito program they announce $100 million. How many of us who participate? Why is everyone silent?

So if Lisk today for instance launch a launch on Kito and they say they're going to reward people who yap about them and they reward who's going to participate. All right. Cool. So you know you know the reality when we participate in this it's cool. But what is yapping all about?

when I know yapping or how I knew yapping was to be about using your skills to like create educative content about a project and they get to reward you for it. But what do we see today? What do we see today? We wake up in the morning, we see somebody can just write glist everybody and they post their photo, they get multiple views and they get paid for it. But now the person who actually uses his skill to contribute will see nothing.

You'll tell him he's not qualified. Why? Because we focus on hype still rather than real contribution. Because the person who is posting, let me not use photo, let them not drag me. But the person who is posting for hype is actually doing it because he wants people to hype his stuff and they get the hype and they get paid for the hype.

But people who actually use their skill to contribute, they really get what they contribute. No, they get they don't get what they want because people who use their hype already occupies there. And that's one of the issues because like I said, we focus too much on hype instead of the real contribution. All right. Now, so let me say the noise now we do in Africa versus the actual work.

Africa, we do more hype than contribution. I've said it and what's the pattern? We join space yap for hours. When I mean yap for hours now, not the actual using your skills to like talk about stuff. And the reason why I also say stop yapping because if you check people who actually yap bring out one person who really yaps and ask him let's say for cubic if I pronounce the name right okay cubic let's say cubic was having a yapping program now and they have like 100,000 person bring out one person from you and ask him what is cubic all about he will pend you I'm not I'm not lying he's going to p you because literally he does not know what cubic is all about but when he hears that there's a reward program he's going to just join he will enter charge GP what is Q be all about he copy and post I know many people um one of my writers normally do that like when I gave a task write about lisk what the guy did was he went to charge GPT just what is lisk all about I know lisk formally was not EVM they were using JS SDK so now he's not updated or let me say the charge GP is not updated so he just copied from charge GPT posted.

I was like, "Bro, what's up? Are you still in 2021? Don't you know list is updated?" Then it was like he copied it from charge. Before he even told me I copied it from charge, I already knew.

So now let's reduce yapping in a way that does not make sense. But now let's focus on the real yapping. That's using your skills now to contribute to projects. So now how many of us are edmers? How many of us are edrop farmers?

Don't be shy. What is an ed farmer? Yeah. Or you are retired farmers.

All right. So enugu they know me when I come to speak at events once I mention about airrop nobody raised up their hand because they know I would drag them. But now so airrop is actually cool. Now I'll come to talk about it from two sides. From the end user side and from the product owner that's like the founder side.

Some of them have issues actually you know now let's talk from the user side now a project remember when they called us low quality users who was there a founder called us lowquality users X was like on fire everybody was like why you call us low quality users how many of us remember that time raise your hand now let me see or are we not on X okay only one person okay two persons but do you know the real truth we're actually low quality users if you see it You you just have to own that word. Do you know why we are low quality users? If cubic announce Okay, I'm not sure cubic has done have you done an air drop. All right, cool. Cubic today now say they want to Are you guys on minute?

Okay, let's say they not minute and they like let's go. We are planning a minute and now they say everybody who Let me don't use cubic for example. Let me use a dex on cubic. Now what is the use? What is the usage of a desk of a DEX is to swap tokens and do liquidity providers and the rest.

But now they get to announce that we are going to reward people who actually test our platform and they announce that okay we're going to give $100,000 of cubic to people. You know that many persons will rush. You know that why are they rushing? Are they rushing because they want to test the app? Why are they rushing for exactly?

So now that's what make us I mean low quality. You know why? When the airrop finish, when the world finish, what will happen? Everybody in that protocol has finished, they go to the next. So now when we keep hopping from one project to the next to the next what wake up today and say or let me say what if airrop all of a sudden let me say there is a do that controls the whole web 3 now and say no more air drop you that is a air drop you that is an airdrop farmer sorry what will you use and feed yourself without skills for instance they said no more airrop farming anymore in web 3 but you came into the space as an airdrop farmer without a skill as there's no job farming.

What will you use to feed yourself? Because literally we are doing we in web three. Who's here for the tech? Who's here in web three for the tech? Uh congratulations.

I'm here for the I'm here for the money. So you know when I was in web two you know I entered web three space when I was in web two the first time I was still like very very new. The first company I worked with, they told me that I joined the company today. The next day they removed me from the company. I was like, why?

You know what they told me? They said I'm too young to earn money in Nigeria. I was I was like, how am I too young? That time I think I was like 14 or 15. But I was hearing that people who were actually even 12 in other countries were earning money.

But why am I different? Let me not let me lie. I cry. And after crying, I went to the founder. I was like, "Bro, what's up?

Am I too young to earn?" I literally had to search on Google, what is the legit age to earn money in Nigeria? Because I was literally confused. Now, this let me just go apart for I mean away from that. Now, the reason why I joined the web space is that the first ever company I worked with as a web three person when they paid me my first salary, I was like, "Wow."

You know, when you say wow is wow. It's different. When you pay my first salary, I was a developer then. They paid me first salary sorry I was like wow so there's money in this thing from that time I say web two by you it was from web two I've not really made much from how from the like only one job I did in web three I was like wow from there as I became full-time web 3 person so now another thing you should also notice that now let's move out of edrop you understand the reason why I said less of farming edrop because that's what makes us low quality users Now let's go to to hype of meme projects. Memes are good but literally memes is also part of the issues because it's not giving any contribution rather it's giving you short term instead of you to focus on long term.

So let me just go fast. I think I've had my time. All right. So now web 3 is not just all about making noise. Let us know.

It's all about making impact. And it's the impact you want to see that is going to make us know that yeah we are building the future of web 3 here in Africa then okay let me skip this like shortterm and longterm I've mentioned shortterm now longterm is build a marketable skill now contribute to opensource also build a sustainable career in web sustainable web career most of us have a career yeah but is it sustainable imagine being an airdrop person as your career is that sustainable Imagine being a yapper as your main career. Is that sustainable? So now build a sustainable career instead of just coming into the web 3 space for let me say the hype and just you get today there's money in web 3 you enter then the person who on board you to web 3 pushes you to start farming airrop that's what you going to focus on. So now we have to push oursel to like if we are trying to onboard somebody let's get to on board people to build a sustainable career rather than just building a career in the web 3 space.

Then also earn from your skills. Make make sure you earn from your skills because with earning from your skills that's that's literally better because from shortterm when you do air drop you do yapping you do all those things. Yeah. You see quick money you see 50k you see more than 50k that's one time payment. Do you know that but person or people who are using their skills to earn like $500 per month is better than you.

You know why? When your 50k finish, where you see the next 50k from but somebody who is earning $500 monthly, if he knows that $500 finish today, next month is earning another $500. All right. So, let me leave developers then non-developers. How can you contribute to web3 space?

Design products for like blockchain comm I mean blockchain tools. Run community on boarding programs also write I mean educational articles for people to on board I mean to on board people into the web three space and all right these are African products that are built from Africa. I don't have time so all right this is just what we do at Nestbridge. So we train developers, we also host events, meetups and rest. We also partner with like top blockchains and rest.

Then we also create opportunities for everybody. Yeah, this is all our initiatives. Then our current conference that's coming up next month, web3 confinogu. All right. So let me just skip this.

So now the call to I don't call it call to action but I call it call to fire. So now let me skip developers not developers here. So now for non-developers apart from finding a team and contributing or let me say apart from find finding a team contribute start your own stuff as a designer you could start just start designing put out yourself pull yourself out sorry show that oh I can do this and when you show people that you can do it they're going to know what you can do and from there you could get opportunities and the rest then also find other things to do then let me end it here. All right. So, this is where I'll end it.

But if you want to still ask any question cuz I have a short time. So, if you want to ask me any question, you could ask me while I go down the stage. And also, if you want to follow me on X, this is my account. Yeah. So, thank you very much.